Communication
I'm pretty sure I went above and beyond with this project, but only because it's something I've been wanting to do for my son. When he heard the story of Noah's Ark at a Sunday School we tried out, I remembered that there was a parallel story in Hindu scripture. I decided this would be a good time to act on my longtime idea of creating a sort of Comparative Religions course for children.
A podcast proved to be the perfect medium for this message. It would have been great to use podcasts in my Junior English class way back when, allowing students to record their versions of stories that we read in class. They could act out the parts in groups, make their own creative adaptations, and pose thought-provoking questions at the end. Creating a podcast would demonstrate students’ comprehension of what they had read in a fun way, as it did for me with this project.
A podcast proved to be the perfect medium for this message. It would have been great to use podcasts in my Junior English class way back when, allowing students to record their versions of stories that we read in class. They could act out the parts in groups, make their own creative adaptations, and pose thought-provoking questions at the end. Creating a podcast would demonstrate students’ comprehension of what they had read in a fun way, as it did for me with this project.
|
Stories of the World: Comparative Religion for Kids
|
By Kamalee (Katherine Marie Lee) Strickland It is an ongoing challenge of mine to try to expose my 5-year-old son to different religions. Rarely are scriptural stories presented in an unbiased manner, free from ulterior missionary motives. One can spend hours searching for a pearl in the sands of YouTube, which do exist (see examples embedded here of the two stories in the podcasts above). However, if the story is told without commentary, the task of deriving meaning and connection is left to the parent. So I decided an interactive weekly podcast series could be a great way for myself and parents like me to explore and compare ancient folklore, myths, and religious stories with our children. This series, titled “Stories of the World,” consists of groups of three podcasts, as you see above with "floodpodcasts 1-3.” The first two retell similar stories from different religions or cultures and should be listened to in the same learning session, if possible, with time for brief discussion at the end of each. The third podcast is intended to be listened to at the start of the following week’s session as a review and also a chance to get answers to the questions posed at the end of the previous two podcasts, as well as questions posted by listeners at the discussion forum at storiesoftheworld.com (a fictitious website). The beauty of this technology is that podcasts are recordings that can be subscribed to and listened to at any time. As these are recorded on Saturdays, they could be listened to in a “Sunday School” setting or any time within the week, before the discussion forum closes end of day Friday.
|